“Icouldn’t be a bit lonely here, Aunt Laura,” he said, as he was sitting on the floor that night beside his bed, struggling to take off his shoes and stockings all by himself, “you see even when you and Uncle Sam are too busy for me to ’sturb you, I can just go out and play with the chickens, and talk to the little calf, and ‘pretend.’

“It’s lots of fun ‘pretending,’” he continued, “I can pretend, oh! ever so many things—I learned to do it when I had the mumps, and had to stay in bed. It wasn’t half so bad the having to stay in bed then. I used to pretend I was a magician sometimes, and could turn my toys into real soldiers, and real ships, and it used to be lots of fun.”

“I don’t think we shall ever be too busy for you to disturb us, Laurie,” said Aunt Laura.

“Oh, may I peep into that funny little door?” Laurie exclaimed, as he caught sight of a tiny closet over the mantelpiece. “Where does it go to, does it go into the chimney?” Aunt Laura laughed, “No, it does not go into the chimney, though everybody who sees it thinks so at first.” And indeed that seemed the only place that it could open into, for it was exactly over the fireplace, where the chimney must be. To be sure the fireplace had been boarded up and painted white, and was never used now; in its stead a great iron stove like a box, where corn cobs were burned, was used in winter, for that made the room much warmer, but certainly the little closet had been built at the same time as the house, when the fireplace and the chimney had been built.

“I don’t exactly know where it goes to, Laurie,” said Aunt Laura, “it has always been there. When I was a little girl I used to think it was a door into another part of the house, that I did not know about, where I had never been, and I used to stand on a chair and peep in, but it was too dark to see in all the way. I keep some of my jellies in it now,” she added, and as she spoke, she opened the door, and showed him a tempting row of tumblers, filled with clear amber jelly, neatly covered with white paper.

Even after Aunt Laura had tucked him into bed, and given him a good-night kiss, Laurie kept wondering about all he had seen—there was so much to think about.

“I wonder why the pigeons keep flying about all day,” he said to himself, “and what chickens and geese say to each other—after all, I don’t believe they can talk at all,” he continued, “for they do not seem to be really doing anything—they just fly around in a silly sort of way, picking up crumbs, I wonder what they would talk about if they could. I wonder if I could peep inside the dove-cote some day and see what it looks like.” By this time he was almost asleep, but he kept repeating to himself, “I wonder—I wonder—I wonder,” over and over again, until it sounded more like whirrder-whirrder-whirr—yes, Laurie was almost sure he had stopped saying “wonder” and something soft like whirr-whirr sounded close by, as if one of the pigeons themselves was flying about the room.

Laurie opened his eyes wide—“How could a pigeon be in this room,” he thought; “they must surely be asleep in the dove-cote by this time.” The room was quite dark, except for a little square of light high upon the wall, but he gradually made out the different objects in the room, and saw that the light came from the little cupboard on the mantlepiece. He heard the soft whirr again, this time close by, and looking up he saw a pigeon perched on one of the four posts of his bed. “So you don’t believe we have any work to do,” said the pigeon. “Would you like to see inside the dove-cote? If so, come with me.” When he said this, he hovered about the bed for a moment, then fluttered over to the mantelpiece, and stood beside the little cupboard.

Laurie enters the cupboard

Laurie was about to say that he could not possibly get up to the door, when he remembered what Aunt Laura had said about climbing up on a chair to peep in, so he jumped out of bed, and pulling a chair close to the fireplace, stepped from it to the mantelpiece. It never occurred to him until afterwards, to think that he was ever so much too big to fit inside the cupboard, and it really did not matter after all, for somehow or other he did fit—whether he had grown suddenly quite small, or the cupboard was quite large when one got near enough to it, I do not know, but there he was inside, with the pigeon hopping along sedately ahead of him.

It was apparently a narrow passage, and very long, for they walked on for some time, turning corners now and then, as though it ran past certain rooms in the house, and Laurie could see that it was lit by hundreds of fireflies, making it almost as bright as day.